Rudy Guede, Amanda Knox’s chief accuser, was forced at last to speak in open court today. Sort of. He’s the only person in the world who claims that he can place Knox and Raffaele Sollecito at the murder scene in 2007, the cottage where Knox’s British roommate Meredith Kercher was slashed to death. Rudy, who is serving a mere 16 years for this crime, has never backed his accusations up with actual proof. He claims to have heard Amanda’s voice, arguing with Meredith, while he was on the toilet, listening to music on his I–Pod. He rushed out of the bathroom, saw Meredith lying bleeding on the floor and saw Amanda’s “silhouette” fleeing the scene. He saw a shadowy man he thinks was Raffaele (whom he’d never met), even though the man was left-handed and short and Raffaele is the complete opposite.

Rudy had a chance to say, loud and clear: “I am innocent.” But he didn’t. He didn’t even do a good job of implicating Amanda and Raffaele.

Instead of sealing the deal for the prosecution by vocalizing his accusations against Amanda and Raffaele and backing them up with actual proof, Rudy refused to be questioned about what happened the night that Meredith Kercher was slashed to death. He left the fate of this case hanging on the DNA report that the court’s independent witnesses will file on Wednesday, an outcome that Italy’s Nazione newspaper had predicted.

International manhunt: On November 20, 2007, Italian police announced a search for Rudy Guede, releasing these photos. By his own admission, he went disco dancing after the murder of Meredith Kercher and then took his bloody shoes and pants to Germany, where he dumped them.

Knox and Sollecito, convicted of the murder in a separate trial, never got the chance (if only through their lawyers), to defend themselves against Rudy’s accusations. Instead, the judge allowed them to make spontaneous statements, but only after Rudy left the court. All of this was captured on camera (see Umbria24’s video below).

Rudy was expected to strike out at the defense witnesses who testified last week. Prisoners one and all, they claimed he had confided in them–or in another prisoner–that Amanda and Raffaele were innocent. His accusers ranged from a convicted child killer to a mobster snitch.

Bizarrely, instead of explaining himself, Rudy relied on a handwritten letter he’d written in 2010, already leaked to the press. Even more bizarrely, he claimed that his own handwriting was illegible and he could not read it–a task Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini magically achieved when he read the letter out loud.

The judge queried Rudy about the letter, asking if he understood every word of it. Well, maybe not the larger ones.

Highlights of Rudy’s missive:

*Accusations against Rudy? “Baseless gossip.”

*His jailhouse accusers? “Pigs.”

*Did you really tell child killer Mario Alessi that the two college students were innocent? “Purely and simply the ravings of a sick and twisted mind.”

*You say Amanda and Raffaele were at the murder scene. Why did you leave copious DNA everywhere, including inside the victim, and they did not? If you’re innocent, how do you account for your bloody handprints and shoeprints? The fact that you went disco dancing after the murder? That you fled to Germany, where you dumped bloody shoes and pants? “And finally I wish that sooner or later the judges will recognize my complete non-involvement in the horrible murder of the splendid, magnificent girl who was Meredith Kercher, by Raffaelle Sollecito and Amanda Knox.”

After listening to the prosecutor read a letter whose words he couldn’t understand, Rudy slipped out of the courtroom and into obscurity, having used up his last chance to tell Meredith Kercher’s family really happened that terrible night of Nov. 1, 2007. He’s serving 16 years, marked down from 30 after he implicated Amanda and Raffaele in 2009, after first telling a friend in an intercepted Skype call two years earlier that Amanda wasn’t there and he’d ever even met Raffaele.

It should be noted that Rudy’s alibi, that he had consensual sex with Meredith Kercher and she was killed by someone else while he was on the toilet, bears no resemble to Mignini’s sex game theory and has been called fantastical by every judge and juror who’s ever heard it.

If this trial is about the search for the truth, then we’ve just witnessed yet another sideshow. Stay tuned for Wednesday, when the experts’ DNA reports will be leaked, no doubt, as soon as they’re deposited in court.

Try as they might, photographers weren’t able to get Rudy, Amanda and Raffaele in the same frame. This was their last chance.

Amanda’s statement. “If it please the Court, I simply wish to declare that the only time Rudy Guede, Raffaele and I were ever together in the same room was in a courtroom. We never had any kind of contact. I am shocked and anguished by his declarations, truly, because he knows we weren’t there. He knows that we weren’t involved and I don’t know what happened that night. I just wish I could tell him, ‘Look, mistakes can be fixed, first by telling the truth.’ That’s all. Thank you.”

Raffaele’s statement. “Rudy said in his chat (ndr. an intercepted Skype call) to Giacomo Benedetti that Amanda wasn’t there and he saw just the shadow of a man. Then he accused us just because we were already blamed.

“For almost 4 years I’ve been fighting back against the shadows, and he comes here and doesn’t even speak. What should I defend myself from, if he won’t speak?”

ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas has an excellent wrap-up on the Amanda Knox case and today’s developments. She’s heading to Perugia in July, she says.

MURDER IN ITALY, my book on the spell-binding Amanda Knox case, is a Library Journal Bestseller. Winner of Best True Crime 2010 Editor’s Choice and Reader’s Choice awards. Called “a real-life murder mystery as terrifying and compelling as fiction,” it’s built on diary excerpts, wiretaps, court scenes, trial transcripts, first-hand experience and interviews with key players for all sides.

MURDER IN ITALY is online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound and bookstores. It’s also a Kindle & ebook. I’ll blog about the Knox case until the final appeal.